Director’s Statement דבר המנהל

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Of all the many unique qualities that characterize the Jerusalem Studio School, one of the most conspicuous is its singularity among art schools in Israel. The JSS stands out in Israel’s current artistic milieu, and even more dramatically in the light of the historical ambivalence towards figuration and representation throughout Jewish culture. The JSS addresses the imperative for the identification with and projection of the human body in art. Be it actually represented or not- whether in a portrait by Velázquez, a still life by Chardin, a landscape by Corot, or an abstraction by Franz Kline – that internalized reflection of the human body permeates, gives proportion and meaning to all that has touched us most deeply throughout the history of art.

The JSS offers its students a studio situation in which they can focus exclusively on the practice of drawing and painting from the human figure. Our students are involved on a daily basis with the challenges of direct observation from nature, of the painter’s materials and craft, and an on-going revitalizing dialogue – through drawing and painting – with great masterworks, both recent and past. It is this concentrated and sustained physical involvement which forms the link with that thread of understanding extended to us by the past.

Visitors to the School are invariably amazed by the intense and ambitious atmosphere of work. They know they have entered a real art school. It is not preoccupied with careerism or promotional oneupmanship, nor does it indoctrinate students into the shallow trough of prevailing trends or the expectations of art world pundits. It is not a school attempting to revive or establish anew the hierarchical structure of the Academy.

The Jerusalem Studio School is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence and uncompromising commitment to the art of painting and drawing. It is a school where investigation through the act of drawing is considered the basis to understanding the “probity of art” (Ingres) and the means to revealing the quality and truth of one’s own voice. It is a school that shuns the use of formulas, a place where the student confronts the possibility of personal failure as the foreground plane of any artistic endeavor. At the JSS, success and artistic achievement are hard won goals.

We believe that Jerusalem Studio School students will be the painters of the future, the shapers of a figurative consciousness and culture in Israel, and the builders of a patronage that can believe in the quality of art.

Israel Hershberg
JSS Founder & Artistic Director